About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

43 Minn. J.L. & Ineq. 29 (2025)
The Homo Economicus Model of Work Describes Men More than Women, but only in WEIRD Cultures

handle is hein.journals/lieq43 and id is 695 raw text is: 29 The Homo Economicus Model of Work Describes Men More than Women, But Only in WEIRD Cultures Thomas Talhelm, Danila Medvedev & Yin Lit Introduction Money is an obvious reason people work, but people work for many reasons that are not directly about money. People work for social approval, because of a calling, because being productive is a value in itself, and other reasons besides money. We tested several ways to encourage people to work, and we put those into two broad buckets-money and psychology. We argue that the money model of work applies more to men than women-at least in Western cultures. In contrast, gender differences are weaker (and even flip directions) in non-Western cultures. The money bucket is the classic homo economicus model of work.1 People work for their own self-interest. People work to earn money for themselves, and (in the most simplistic model) they should ignore non-monetary motivations, like social approval, judgment, or calling in life. The psychology bucket includes the social motivations that the simplest economic theory says that people should ignore-social approval, feelings of satisfaction, competition, charity, and so on. These motivations also include methods to motivate people to change their behavior in the nudge movement. One example of a classic psychological incentive is when a University of California research team from the Department of t. Thomas Talhelm is an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Danila Medvedev is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Dispute Resolution Research Center at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. Yin Li is a PhD student at the Yale University School of Management. This research was supported by a William Ladany Fellowship awarded to Thomas Talhelm. Correspondence about this article should be addressed to Thomas Talhelm, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637. Email: talhelm@uchicago.edu. Open Data: Talhelm. Data and analysis scripts are available in the Open Science Framework. They are also available upon request from Thomas Talhelm talhelm@uchicago.edu. 1. Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis & Richard McElreath, In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies, 91 AM. ECON. REV. 73, 73 (2001).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most